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Our cover story this week is a sad tale of greed and fraud perpetrated on mostly elderly victims by a slick group of tricksters who ought to be ashamed of themselves. If they aren’t now, they likely soon will be as local, state and federal law enforcement officers catch up with them and put an end to their nefarious scheme and hold those responsible to account in a court of law.

It never ceases to amaze me how creative international cyber crooks can be. There are countless online scams and schemes intended to enrich criminals at the cost of innocent Internet users. We have all heard of viruses, worms, Trojans and other variations of malware, as published warnings have been disseminated since the early days of personal computing.

A recent column in the Houston Chronicle by Lisa Falkenberg caught my attention. Her article centered around the pride felt and expressed by most of us Texans. She pointed out that unfortunately, in spite of our Texan bravado, Texas leads the nation in too many of the wrong things. Her article went on to point out we have been recently rated as the worst state in the union for delivery of health care.

In this space last week, we expressed regret at the timidity of Beaumont Independent School District superintendent-in-waiting Dr. Timothy Chargois, who did not see fit to instruct his attorneys to remove an ill-gotten clause in his contract granting him an automatic pay raise despite the stated objections of virtually the entire BISD board. The board’s outside counsel Tanner Hunt allowed the clause to somehow slip into the contract.

While we harbor no disrespect for the Wall Street Journal who called us “that scrappy little paper from Southeast Texas,” we prefer to think of ourselves as simple seekers of the truth. We’re of the opinion that headlines and sound bites never tell the whole story. Our readers demand all the facts, facets and flavors of every story or event. And, they expect to be informed, educated and stirred to action.